Sports of The Times;N.B.A. Name Game Keeps Coming Up Flat

This is certainly the case for Jeff Van Gundy as the Knicks prepare for their first-round playoff series against the Cavaliers that begins tonight in Cleveland. Van Gundy, a tough, hard-working assistant turned head coach, is auditioning. In the next two months, Ernie Grunfeld, the Knicks' vice president, must decide whether Van Gundy will have his own era or merely be an asterisk.

Most of the Knicks players like him, and other coaches like him. But the players who like him may not be around much longer.

Grunfeld doesn't have an easy choice, and the Knicks haven't tipped their hand. Instead, they've kept Van Gundy dangling without a commitment in an effort to have their cake and eat it, too. On one hand, the team is waiting to see which "big-name" coaches become available; on the other hand, it wants to see whether the 34-year-old coach can miraculously lead New York out of the Valley of Doom.

Van Gundy is confident enough. "I think I come to work everyday," he said recently. "And I try to help these guys win. I hope that's what they want from coach."

"In New York, you have to put a winner out there," Harper said. "It's very tough to rebuild in New York."

But there are other places besides New York. Van Gundy should be in New Jersey. He should coach the Nets.

In fact, should the Knicks dance around this summer, Willis Reed, or whoever runs the Nets, should make Van Gundy the team's replacement for Butch Beard. This is a good fit: a young, energetic coach who relates well to players, and a franchise with long-term needs that can grow with an ambitious coach.

The Knicks will then be free to pursue their "name."

And frankly, outside of Indiana's Larry Brown, who is under contract, or the long shot of attracting Phil Jackson away from Chicago, there is no "name."

The Cleveland series represents the formal end to an exciting period of prosperity under Pat Riley, when the Garden rocked, Armani reigned and the team overflowed with confidence.

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Don Nelson ushered in a demoralizing Tommy Hilfiger era for 59 games. Now, the challenge for the Knicks is to find someone to rebuild a broken-down, worn-out team, and do it in an arena where front-row patrons spend $1,000 per seat per game to watch the Knicks. The same seat in Cleveland sells for $600. A $100 seat at the Garden sells for $46 in Cleveland. The Knicks aren't the only team with a coaching quandary, though the others situations are more cut and dried. The coach is gone, search for another.

New Jersey dismissed Beard, Charlotte dismissed Allen Bristow and Toronto dismissed Brendan Malone. Mike Dunleavy may be out in Milwaukee by week's end and George Karl could be bounced if Seattle is bounced from the playoffs in the first two rounds.

What's disturbing is that the old names keep resurfacing as candidates to fill the vacancies. Hubie Brown, who last coached in 1986, has been mentioned as a candidate for the Nets. Dick Motta, who may be ousted as head coach in Dallas, has had his name thrown in the mix. Malone has already been mentioned as a Nets candidate. Toronto, to its credit, replaced Malone with his 35-year-old assistant, Darrell Walker.

The National Basketball Association is becoming progressively younger with more players routinely leaving college after one and two seasons. The traditional player-coach, or player-official, relationship can no longer be maintained by threats, or by relying on traditional authority roles.

It's no accident that 51 players were suspended for a total of 53 games and fined in excess of $283,000 this season. Two teams were fined $100,000.

"We have to adapt to change," said Wayne Embry, the Cavaliers' general manager. "It's not cut and dried anymore. You have to coach and be firm but at the same time be respectful. We can't begin to imagine all that a lot of these kids are experiencing today with the pressure put on them to be successful."

Will the Knicks find a happy medium, a good fit? Or will the pressure to hire a "name" force the franchise into another Don Nelson catastrophe?

"It's worth while to search for the right individual," Embry said. "The bottom line is, we get the job done through people. You can put all the X's and O's up there you want. People execute those X's and O's. You get the job done through people."